Researchers are often interested in investigating sensitive topics as mental health, risky behaviours, drug use, sexuality, personal expenses, tax evasion, etc. Data on these topics often rely on sensitive questions, which are often hard to elicit given privacy concerns, the social desirability of the answer, and/or the fear of disclosure to third parties. The course introduces the concepts of social desirability, misreporting and the cognitive process of asking sensitive questions in surveys. It describes a series of indirect questioning techniques to minimize the embarrassment in answering sensitive questions; these methods include the item count technique, the randomize response technique, and the three card method. Since social desirability may cause missing data, the course describes the basic concepts in non response analysis, including missing data patterns, mechanisms, and imputation methods. Finally, the ethics of asking sensitive questions is discussed, with emphasis on confidentiality and anonymization. The course is mainly applied in nature and includes several examples from empirical research.
Presented by:
Dr Alessandra Gaia
Date & time:
June 19, 2017 9:00 am - June 23, 2017 4:00 pm
Venue:
University of Essex